Saturday, March 04, 2006

Calling Paracelsus

There are still a number of barriers to the commercialization of hydrogen-powered cars. One is the infrastructure cost of building refueling stations. Another big challenge is reducing the cost of obtaining hydrogen itself, which has to be extracted from fossil fuels, such as carbon, or from water.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that carbon is not exactly a fossil fuel. Now, short of alchemy, can someone please explain to me how we are to obtain hydrogen from carbon?